1,800 Minecraft players were phished, not hacked

Minecraft studio Mojang has clarified the events around the recent leak of 1,800 players’ passwords and personal details.

Initial reports suggested the game had been hacked, but the developer has claimed that this is not the case. Instead, the personal details were gained through phishing schemes, run by people posing as official Mojang employees.

"We haven’t been hacked," the firm’s Owen Hill wrote on the official blog. "A bunch of bad people have tricked some of our users into disclosing their account information. We’ve emailed everyone affected, and reset all compromised passwords. If you haven’t received an email from us, you don’t need to worry.

"No-one has gained access to the Mojang mainframe. Even if they did, we store your passwords in a super encrypted format. Honestly, you don’t need to panic."

Hill stressed that users should never enter their account details on websites that are not owned by Mojang, and advised that users choose different passwords for different websites.